The End

was packed with refugees and evacuees, many of them women and children. He was struck, as they journeyed through villages near the front, by the crowded roads, full of people carrying their few possessions and hoping to find refuge somewhere in the Reich. He eventually reached home in Emmendingen only to be told of the bombing on 27 November of nearby Freiburg, a town with a medieval core of picture-book attractiveness not far from the Swiss border to the south, without strategic or industrial significance, and with a population of more than 100,000. When he travelled to Freiburg a couple of days later, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Practically the entire old town had been obliterated. Only the glorious Gothic minster, its tall spire the very symbol of the town, was left standing, if badly damaged, much as Cologne’s cathedral had withstood everything the Allies had thrown at the city. Almost 3,000 bodies lay beneath the rubble. It was a terrible picture of devastation. The helpless rage of the survivors, amid the all-embracing misery, was directed only in part at the Allied bombing crews; it was aimed more at the Nazi Party and its leaders who had provoked such outrages. When his leave was over, the officer travelled northwards through Mannheim and Koblenz, again deeply saddened and troubled by the destruction of once lovely towns. Amid the ruined buildings of Koblenz, at the confluence of the Rhine and the Mosel, he was reminded of how the ‘prophecy’ that Robert Ley, the Labour Front leader, had made in 1933 had in an unintended sense come true: ‘in ten years’ time you won’t recognize your town.’⁸⁷

This sardonic comment reflected a weary resignation at the scale of the destruction. Such sentiments were commonplace. But other attitudes among soldiers were less pessimistic, and still supportive of the regime and what they took to be Germany’s aims in continuing the struggle. One sergeant, writing home in early December, spoke wistfully of the coming ‘feast of peace’ at Christmas. However, the bombs were still raining down and the bells not ringing out for the peace ‘which is so yearned for by all peace-loving peoples’. ‘Our enemies’, he continued, ‘have no understanding for this wish’, and so ‘we, the entire German people, still stand during this feast in a fierce struggle against these degenerate peoples, led by Jewish parasites who know no fatherland nor have one’.⁸⁸

Within the SS, unsurprisingly, outrightly Nazified views were still prevalent. An SS corporal, sympathizing with his family’s living conditions after an air raid on Munich but relieved that they were well, blamed the ‘air terror’ on the Jews ‘because the damned Jews are worried about their sack of money and see that the entire world slowly understands that they are guilty of wars and are making money out of blood and tears’. He believed, however, ‘that we will be victorious, though it will still cost much sacrifice and suffering’.⁸⁹ Along with many other soldiers, he had great hopes of the V2 rockets launched at Antwerp and London, after published reports of the destruction they had caused in the British capital. ‘The V2 are all the talk with us,’ he wrote in mid-November. ‘Perhaps they can be fired on America…. I believe for certain that the final victory will be ours.’⁹⁰ A corporal, writing home the same day, hoped that the V2 would ‘bring a decision with England’ in 1945. Then it would be Russia’s turn in 1946. ‘I can’t help it. I have the feeling that all will be well,’ he commented.⁹¹ A gunner writing to his family from Schneidemuhl in Pomerania rejoiced at the news of the V2 attacks on England. ‘Great, isn’t it?’ he remarked. The arrogance of the Allies, he felt, was being paid back in kind. His confidence had also been bolstered by the way, seemingly against the odds, German troops had managed to stabilize the fronts. ‘The German soldier has again proved that he is not yet beaten after five years of war,’ he proudly stated.⁹²

An Army High Command censorship report in early November, which came into Allied hands, indicated that such attitudes were not isolated. Of course, it was sensible to avoid negative comments in letters that passed under the censor’s eyes and could have dire repercussions, but there was no requirement to express outrightly pro-Nazi or glowingly positive comments on the war. Yet the German censor’s report stated: ‘In spite of the fact that there are now more letters showing a rather weak belief in the final victory, the whole of the mail still proves a strong confidence. They still trust the Fuhrer as much as ever, and some even think that the destiny of the German people depends on him alone.’ The main qualification was the increased doubts about new weapons and the view that ‘all our efforts are useless if the new weapons are not committed very soon’.⁹³

Among higher officers, though attitudes towards the Nazi leadership varied, there was no hint of disloyalty to Hitler. For the sustenance of the regime, this was crucial. Even those far from enthusiastic about Nazism and writing privately could still find much to applaud in Hitler. In diary comments he made in late December, Colonel Curt Pollex, in charge of officer training at Doberitz, the troop-training grounds west of Berlin, was critical of the Party and the ‘bigwigs’ running it but complimentary about Hitler. He remarked positively on the need for National Socialism and the justification for the war (blame for which he attributed to Roosevelt and Stalin). Germany had to break the Versailles Treaty, he claimed, and the timing of the war had been correct. Some of Hitler’s underlings were rogues and idiots who had deceived him and the people. But, despite evident crass errors in military matters, ‘big-mouth propaganda’ and other nonsense, Colonel Pollex still thought the direction of the state leadership was right. If Hitler was ill and could no longer cope, then he should resign; but no decent person of judgement should underrate what he had achieved.⁹⁴

Beyond continued loyalty to Hitler, there was in the officer corps still an independent ‘code of honour’. This had not hindered complicity in atrocities in the eastern campaigns, but it did offer its own block on action that might undermine the war effort. Major-General Johannes Bruhn, commander of a People’s Grenadier division before being captured on the western front in November 1944, and regarded by his captors as ‘anti-Nazi’ in attitude, spoke of suggestions emanating from Switzerland that German generals should lay down their arms. ‘That couldn’t be reconciled with their honour. It couldn’t possibly be done: it’s absolutely out of the question,’ he remarked to fellow officers, unaware that his comments were being bugged by his British captors. ‘The officer corps loves its country, and believes implicitly in its own respectability and ideas of honour and lives accordingly; and like a trusting child considers it quite impossible that it is being wrongly led, and that the command is other than it says it is, and that they have stained their hands with blood etc. in the most revolting way.’⁹⁵

Such fragments of a mosaic never build into a complete picture. As far as it is possible to generalize, it seems that morale within the Wehrmacht was somewhat better than within the civilian population. Attitudes varied widely and as in the civilian population scepticism, apathy and resignation were evident among soldiers, alongside anxiety about loved ones suffering and dying in the bombing raids, and worry about the future. A rise in the number of desertions, though punishable by death, tells its own story.⁹⁶ About 350 members of the Wehrmacht each month in the second half of 1944 were sentenced to death for desertion.⁹⁷ Precise motives for desertion are not easy to establish. Probably, fear and desperation played a big part. Most soldiers were by now, like the civilian population, war-weary, just longing for the fighting to stop and to be able to get out of the daily misery and back home. However, there was also commitment, determination, a sense of patriotic duty and, among a minority, still a belief in Hitler. The vast majority of soldiers—probably without much reflection—did what they were told to do by their officers. The unquestioning obedience that was the axiom of military life, not just in Germany, continued to prevail. ‘If the troops don’t want [to fight], it’s all hopeless,’ remarked Colonel Pollex.⁹⁸ Despite everything, the troops did want to fight—or at least were prepared to do so. Whatever they thought of the war, Hitler’s leadership, Germany’s plight, their own hopes of survival, for the overwhelming number of ordinary soldiers there was no sense of any alternative but to continue fighting. Unlike the last months of the First World War, there was no danger of mutiny in the ranks feeding into internal collapse.

V

There was, indeed, optimism among the German troops who advanced into the Ardennes on the early morning of 16 December. Many, according to General von Manteuffel, still believed in Hitler’s ability to turn the tide through new ‘wonder weapons’ and U-boats, and saw it as their task to win him time.⁹⁹ The early stages of the offensive were so successful that the optimism and belief seemed justified. The cloak of secrecy over the operation had worked superbly. The Allies were caught completely unawares. And the bad weather, significantly hindering Allied air strikes, was exactly what the Germans wanted. Enemy forward positions were swiftly overrun. On the northern flank, Dietrich’s 6th SS-Panzer Army, hampered by bad roads and transport difficulties as well as stiff resistance, made relatively slow progress, though its most advanced troops included the SS-Panzer Regiment 1, commanded by the brutal SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer Joachim Peiper, which left a trail of atrocities in its wake, murdering more than eighty American prisoners of war near Malmedy as it went on its way. Further south,